


wild boy, run home

by Liatheus



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Domestic shinobi, Emotional Healing, Gen, Hatake Kakashi-centric, Light Angst, Ninken | Ninja Dogs, Slice of Life, character introspection, i think it's canon-typical anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 06:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12953115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liatheus/pseuds/Liatheus
Summary: Kakashi is entrusted with the care of a wild wolf pup; it takes him down paths he never expected.Set in the post-Naruto/pre-Shippuden time skip.





	wild boy, run home

**Author's Note:**

> Originally started as a submission for the kakashifest week on tumblr, working on prompts 'Shirtless' and 'Sakumo'. The story completely ran away from me though, so here it is, finished a whole two months later.
> 
> It has been something of a comfort fic for me over those past two months, so I'm very happy to be able to share it now. Please enjoy!

He stumbles across the den completely by accident on the return trip from a solo mission, drawn by the smell of day old blood and rotting meat, and finds himself locking gazes with the gleaming yellow eyes of a mother wolf. At her feet, the shredded carcass of a hare lays in scattered pieces around the thin, limp body of a young wolf pup, slumped on its side over the uneven ground. Only the heavy rise and fall of its little stomach beneath fuzzy white fur and the soft whines falling from its mouth as it slowly licks at the exposed flesh of what Kakashi thinks is a hind leg alert him to the life still struggling to survive.

From his distance, a good seven paces away, Kakashi can’t quite figure out what’s wrong with the little thing, other than its clear weakness and inability to feed, even when its mother, decidedly deeming the sudden appearance of a human as a non-threat or perhaps distracted by the distressed sounds of her young, licks at its mouth and noses the piece of meat closer to it. There’s a scurry of movement on the ground; Kakashi tracks the running bodies of four – no, five – more wolf pups as they scamper back to their mother. Two of them clamber over her back, then topple out of sight into the den overshadowed by a fallen tree. Two press themselves close against the grey cloak of their mother, and the last, clearly the leader of the litter, loiters just a step in front, bouncing on its paws as it sniffs the air in his direction.

The mother gives a soft bark, and the curious one scuttles back, grouping itself with its litter mates, though it still watches Kakashi with open interest, tilting its head back and forth.

Not likely more than ten weeks old then, judging by their size and behaviour, and the fuzziness of their coats in mixed patches of grey, white, black, and brown.

Another whine echoes weakly in the air; Kakashi’s attention is pulled back to the pup lying on the ground, the only one of the litter white from head to tail. Interesting, if only because pure white wolves were rare in the summer forests of Konoha, their monochrome colour more readily found in the snow-capped heights of Kumo’s northern-most mountains.

Moving slowly, Kakashi lowers himself into a squat, palms open and spread out in front of him, letting his chakra roll out in gentle, reassuring waves. The mother wolf goes still, her dark pupil and yellow irises locked onto the stranger in her midst once more, but the young ones by her side sniff and paw at the air, their noses and tails twitching.

Closer to the ground, the putrid stench of rotting meat is stronger, and Kakashi is glad for what little reprieve is given to him by his mask. (It is nothing compared to the wasted battlefields of old, the nausea of scorched earth and decomposing bodies, but still. It’s not exactly the nicest smell in the world.) Still telegraphing his movements clear and steady, he slips a hand into a pocket of his flak jacket and pulls out his last food pill, unwrapping it from a shuriken-patterned cloth.

He breaks the pill in half, looks at the young pup again, then breaks a half into a quarter piece. His brow furrows beneath his hitai-ate as he thinks a little more, then breaks the quarter into an eighth piece. Cupping the broken pieces of the food pill in a palm, he catches the gaze of the mother wolf and pulls down his mask with his free hand. Picking up the largest piece between thumb and forefinger, he holds it up in the space between them, watching the mother wolf follow the movement with her eyes, then eats the half in an exaggeratedly big bite, chewing hard.

He can feel the effects of the pill immediately after he swallows; what minor exhaustion felt from two days’ moderately paced travel evaporates into vigour and energy, muscle brimming with new strength.

He picks up the smallest piece and packs the rest of it away back into his pocket, then begins to slowly edge his way towards the pack. On his way, he rolls the little piece against a scrap of the hare remains, smearing flaking specks of dried blood over it. When he is just over a foot away from the mother and her pups, he stops, looking down at the white one with a critical eye.

There, he sees it, a sharp incisor growing unevenly from the pup’s upper jaw, protruding into its lower jaw and cutting sharp into the lower line of its muzzle. The edge of the tooth is lined faintly with blood; beneath it, Kakashi spies a painful-looking flesh wound, skin sliced ragged by the misaligned tooth.

The pup continues to lick pitifully at the meat near it, its snout and whiskers quivering as it tries not to move its mouth too much. A spot of blood wells up as the tooth scrapes at the raw skin despite its efforts.

“You poor thing,” Kakashi murmurs softly to the still air; the mother wolf’s ears swivel in his direction.

He crumbles the fraction of the food pill into even tinier pieces, holding them in the palm of his glove, then slowly leans forward, his chakra still rolling out in controlled, even waves, and stretches his arm out until his hand hovers right over the piece of old meat. The pup either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, driven on by hunger and pain, licking the crumbed pieces right off Kakashi’s hand.

The change is almost instantaneous; the pup’s ears perk up, the laboriousness of its breathing eases, and its tail starts wagging happily, thumping against the ground. The licking becomes more vigorous, the pup climbing unsteadily to its feet to bump its nose against Kakashi’s hand.

Kakashi laughs and pulls his hand back; the wolf pup follows, tongue lolling from its open mouth. An idea comes to him, and he thumps the bottom of a fist into an open palm in happy realisation.

“Oh, I’ve got something for you!”

He pulls off his backpack and rummages through it, quickly locating and pulling out his medical kit. A smear of pain-relieving ointment and a little bandage later, the pup is bounding joyfully around his feet, nipping at his fingers as it tests the coverage of the bandage against its tooth, still keeping as much pressure off its mouth as possible. Still, it yips excitedly, pawing at his calves, tail flicking high in the air.

Smiling, Kakashi pats it on the head, scratching behind its ears and runs a quick hand through its white coat. Job done, he packs away his kit, slips his backpack back over his shoulders, stands up and is just about to leap into the trees, chakra pooling into his feet, when a loud bark echoes in the clearing and makes him freeze.

A tug at his shirt—he looks down to see the mother wolf with her teeth latched firmly in the bottom hem of his shirt, her bright golden eyes looking imploringly at him. Another tug, and he lowers himself down slightly; apparently it is not low enough, because she tugs again.

“Ah, okay, okay, I got it—careful, you’re going to rip my shirt off!”

He ends up sitting cross-legged on his butt, watching with curiosity as the mother wolf picks up the little white pup by the scruff of its neck and deposits it into his lap. There, she nuzzles it, licking at its face and grooming its fur before stepping back into a bow, touching her forehead to Kakashi’s knee. Rising back up, she gives Kakashi a determined look, then turns and begins herding her three other pups back into the den.

Kakashi is dumbstruck, his hands unsure as the pup in his lap gives a little whine, its paws scrabbling as it stumbles over his calves and feet in chase of its litter mates. The mother wolf, seeing it in pursuit, trots back and noses the white pup back into his lap, pushing hard at its small body. The scene plays out several times, until Kakashi finally curls an arm around the pup’s body, barring its way.

“Are you sure?” he asks the mother wolf, voice low.

She gives him a final look, as if to say, _obviously, idiot human_ , then turns her back and walks away, her other pups lingering behind her.

The little white one gives another cry, but Kakashi is already standing, picking up the pup in his arms, and then they are hopping through the forest, the trees rushing by in a green and brown blur. When they’re roughly half a mile out from the den, the main road visible through the foliage, Kakashi drops down to the ground and settles the pup on the grass.

Its white fur contrasts starkly against the colour of its surroundings, even as it curls up as small as possible and droops its head sadly over its front paws. Blue eyes glisten with tears, corners pulled down as the pup refuses to look at Kakashi, tucking its head against its body. At that angle, the protruding tooth is directly visible, resting gently against the bandage.

Kakashi shuffles closer, extending his hand out and resting it in front of the pup.

“Hey, it’s alright.” Ears twitch, but otherwise no movement. “Your mother hasn’t abandoned you, she’s just given you to me to take care of for a little while. I’ll take you to the vet and we’ll get that little fang of yours fixed, and then I’ll take you home, okay?”

A gentle flare of chakra, curling off his fingertips.

“I promise.”

They sit there for several minutes longer, until the pup slowly, finally, leans forward to nuzzle its head into the palm of Kakashi’s head. The next thing he knows, he’s got an armful of wild wolf pup clambering over his chest, licking at his face.

He laughs. “Alright, alright, I’ve got you.” He gets the pup to settle, scratching behind its ears. “How about a name then?” he asks, despite the little warning bell going off at the back of his head, “something cool for a brave little soldier like you.”

The pup gives a happy yap at his words, as if it understood him and _yes, I would like a name, please!_

Kakashi laughs again, looking down with a smile at the white ball of fluff and its peeking tooth. The warning bell in his head rings louder, and his pulse quickens just so slightly beneath his skin.

“Little Fang,” he christens, and resolutely does not think of kind, dark eyes, and the most gentle smile from a world long gone to ash.

***

It’s slower travel with Little Fang at his heels, at once curious and fearful of the bright world away from the sheltered burrow of the den. They stop every hundred metres or so for Little Fang to explore a new bush or tree root, and to place a scent mark; this is how Kakashi confirms that Little Fang is male. They’re not far from the gates of Konoha—perhaps a few hours’ walk at their current pace, so Kakashi thinks nothing of taking a detour to the small stream running southwest of the village to let Little Fang play in the gentle-flowing water while he writes up a quick report for his escort mission and indulges in a chapter of _Icha Icha_.

He’s only just tucked the orange paperback and mission report away into his pouch when Little Fang comes bounding over, droplets of water flying everywhere and soaking into his pants and flak jacket. The pup looks absolutely ecstatic, launching himself at Kakashi’s feet and rolling around in the grass, stray bits of dirt, dust, and clipped grass blades clinging to his wet fur.

“Ahh, that’s not good,” Kakashi says despite his smile, picking the green strands off the white coat. “C’mon, let’s get you clean and dry.”

Slipping off his flak jacket and folding it off to the side, Kakashi picks up Little Fang and washes the debris off his fur in the river. Looking around and finding nothing better, he shrugs to himself and pulls off his shirt, using it to dry off the wolf pup as much as possible as he bounces on his paws. Little Fang’s coat is only half dry when the pup’s eyes gleam with playful mischievousness; he yanks the shirt right out of Kakashi’s hands and speeds off, but manages to run only three metres before he trips over the loose fabric. Suddenly faced with a new opponent, Little Fang snaps at the shirt, rolling around as he battles with the fluttering cotton, tangling himself in its ensnaring arms.

Shaking his head at Little Fang’s play growls and flailing hops, Kakashi heads back to his backpack to pull out his spare shirt only to find… nothing. He digs through the pack, then tips everything out onto the grass, counting stock of his med kit, spare kunai, shuriken, and exploding tags, scrolls, ink, brushes, water container, food ration bars, and a spare pair of underwear. Sweat creeping down his neck, he looks over his shoulder to see that Little Fang has torn straight through a sleeve of his shirt, and is now nibbling a hole in the main panel.

“Maa…”

Little Fang perks up at the sound of his voice; spying the new toys at scattered around Kakashi’s feet, he trots over curiously, mangled remains of ninja shirt still clamped in his mouth.

“No, wait, wait, these aren’t for you!”

Quickly, Kakashi scoops up all his equipment and shoves it back into his pack, just in time before Little Fang reaches him and plonks himself down disappointedly next to him, chewing on cotton as he looks mournfully at the closed backpack. Kakashi sighs, and scratches at the pup’s scruff.

“No, Little Fang, you’ll hurt yourself if you play with those,” he admonishes lightly, “and it’ll hurt a lot worse than your tooth, and you don’t like that at all. Now, can I have my shirt back please?”

A muffled yap accompanied by a wagging tail and shining blue eyes lets Kakashi know that, _no, this is my toy now!_

“Oh, okay. Well then, if you’ll just excuse me…”

Carefully tugging at the neck of his old shirt, he pulls out a kunai and cuts away the mask from the main body; it fits over his face like usual, and even manages to cover most of the length of his neck, torn ends curling just above his collar bone. Little Fang continues to happily chew on the requisitioned shirt while Kakashi fixes up his hitai-ate.

“You better not eat that,” he says lightly. “I know wolves have a sturdier stomach than dogs, but it’s still not good for you.”

Little Fang yips in agreement.

***

They move on soon after, Kakashi coaxing his shirt out of Little Fang’s mouth with a tiny crumb of the food pill, picking up the scraps of cloth and stowing them in his pack to dispose later. The inner line of his flak jacket feels uncomfortably scratchy against his bare chest, his arms unnaturally exposed after long years wearing the standard jounin uniform. Little Fang continues to poke his nose into everything that catches his interest. By the time Konoha’s sturdy gates peak up over the horizon to greet the sky, the sun has started to set, thin wisps of pink and orange curling into blue.

The closer they move to the gates, the closer Little Fang presses himself to Kakashi’s heels, nose and tail twitching anxiously until he finally stops walking altogether, sitting down on the ground and whimpering, head twisted to gaze at the road behind them.

Kakashi stops walking too, squatting down next to the little guy.

“Hey, it’s okay. This is my home, nothing’s gonna hurt you here.” He lets his chakra hum about him faintly again. Little Fang whines, burrowing his face into Kakahi’s legs. “Hm, don’t believe me, huh? It’s okay, if I were a wolf pup, I wouldn’t want to go into an all-human village either.” He thinks hard. “Oh, how about this…”

He unzips his flak jacket down a little over halfway, then picks up Little Fang and slips him against his chest. He wraps an arm around his lower stomach to help support Little Fang’s weight inside the jacket, waiting patiently as the pup adjusts to the new position, head and front paws poking out.

“Good?” he asks the puff of white fur beneath his chin.

 _Arf!_ comes the affirmative response.

Thus settled, Kakashi walks the two of them across the last stretch of road leading to the southern gate, through its towering doors, and up to the registrat counter to the side of the main road.

“Hatake Kakashi, registration no. double-O-nine-seven-two-O, returning from mission designated P-B-double-six-seven-one,” he greets the chūnin stationed at the counter.

“Welcome back, Hatake-san,” the chūnin says formally, already flicking through the mission handle book. His eyes scan down the row of letters and numbers, finding Kakashi’s registered mission and turning the book around for the jounin to sign. “I trust it was a good mission…”

Unfazed by the wide eyes staring at his chest, Kakashi reaches over to grab the fountain pen, dipping it into the waiting inkpot and signs off his name in a quick scrawl.

“Yes, it was,” he says cheerily, putting the pen down and giving a parting wave. “See you!”

“Ah, Hatake-san! Wait, is that—?!”

A _poof!_ , and Kakashi is gone.

***

“So you picked up a stray pup and now you expect me to babysit him while you go grocery shopping.”

The line of Pakkun’s flat, unimpressed stare at the back of his boss’ naked upper half is broken only to swat at the curious paw pokes from the pup in question.

“Now, now, Pakkun, Little Fang isn’t a stray.” Kakashi’s breezy voice is slightly muffled as he rifles through his closet for a new shirt. “We’re going to get his tooth fixed and then we’ll send him right back to his family.”

A pause, the room silent but for the clack of the wolf pup’s paws and nails against the floorboards of Kakashi’s bedroom.

“You named him Little Fang?”

The muscles under Kakashi’s bare shoulders tense at the too-understanding softness under the gruff of Pakkun’s voice; then they relax, Kakashi straightening up to pull the newly acquired shirt over his head, mask up. When he turns around, his exposed eye is curved in a too-tight smile.

“Play nice, Pakkun.”

A _poof!_ , and Kakashi is gone.

The old ninken sighs, this time letting the wolf pup poke his ear.

“Sure thing, boss.”

***

Kakashi comes home barely thirty minutes later to find shredded dark blue fabric all over the floor of his living room-cum-dining area, leading a path into his bedroom. Pushing down the whine that wants to rise out of his throat, he moves into the kitchen to plonk the large brown paper bag filled with that evening’s groceries onto the counter, then quickly follows the trail of scrap fabric. Every step closer makes clearer the sound of low growls, and the scratchy screech of tearing cloth.

He rounds the doorframe, and is greeted with the sight of Pakkun and Little Fang playing tug-of-war with what is clearly the remnants of another of his shirts, right in the middle of a sea of shirt debris. Behind them, his closet door stands ajar, a tumble of thrown clothes at the bottom, the shelf for his shirts entirely empty.

“Uwargh, boss!”

Little Fang yips loudly as he goes stumbling from the sudden release of Pakkun’s side of the tug. Kakashi can’t help but laugh.

“Looks like you two had fun, huh?” Pakkun’s tail wags out of reflex from seeing his boss’ genuine smile. “Guess I’ll have to add more shirts to the shopping list. Make sure neither of you chew on this one before then.” He plucks at the collar of the shirt he’s wearing, the last one he now owns.

“Eh, sorry, boss,” Pakkun says, though his tail is still wagging.

“Maa, don’t worry about it. Can you keep Little Fang company while I clean up and cook dinner?”

“No problem, boss.”

“Thanks, Pakkun.”

Kakashi hums mindlessly under his breath as he picks up the remains of his shirts, tosses them in the bin, and cooks a simple stir fry for himself and chops up half a raw chicken for Little Fang. Pakkun gets a can of his favourite Deluxe All-Natural Dog Beef Treat, and so dinner passes with minimal fuss. Kakashi washes up, then changes Little Fang’s bandage and re-applies the pain-relieving ointment, the little pup holding himself still in Kakashi’s lap when he realises just what his human is doing. The pup is left once more in Pakkun’s care as Kakashi showers, folding his shirt away into the highest shelf, just in case. He towels off, slips on a pair of underwear, and walks back into his bedroom to find both canines curled up on the pillow of his bed.

Pakkun’s head perks up at the sound of Kakashi’s footsteps. “You want me to stay the night, boss?”

“No, it’s okay,” Kakashi says, flicking off the lights. The glow of the lamp in the street below his window casts soft shadows around the room as he pads to his bed.

“Mm, alright.” Pakkun yawns loudly. “Good night, boss.”

 “Good night, Pakkun.”

Little Fang jumps a little at the sudden smoke and sound of Pakkun disappearing back to the land of summons, head shaking back and forth in search of his lost friend. Kakashi calms him with a pat, climbing into bed and gently moving the pup off the pillow. Little Fang takes it as clear invitation to curl up next to him, burying his face into Kakashi’s armpit and resting a paw on his chest.

Kakashi giggles a little, ticklish, then settles as he smooths out Little Fang’s fur with a hand. Even in the low light, his coat gleams bright like silver, his body warm where it rests against Kakashi’s side. The tired little pup falls asleep almost instantly.

It’s only when Kakashi’s eyelids feel too heavy to open again, his breath coming out long and even, that he has the passing, hazy memory of his father standing under the fading sunlight streaming through their kitchen window, silver tail of hair glowing gold, humming as he prepared their dinner.

***

Kakashi wakes up, stretches out both body and chakra, and takes a few seconds to register the sound of low growls coming from the foot of his bed. He rubs the sleep from his eyes, rolling out of the covers, and pads across the floorboards to peer down at Little Fang grappling with the buckle of his backpack, nose twitching.

The corners of his mouth curl up.

“Maa, how long you been up, little guy?” Kakashi crouches down and pulls away the backpack before Little Fang manages to rip a hole through it. The wolf pup digs his teeth into the pack, but lets go when his body is lifted off the floor; he drops down with a whine. “Yes, yes, just give me a minute and I’ll make us both breakfast.”

He throws his backpack onto the highest shelf of his closet for safe keeping, pulling down his only remaining shirt and slipping it on along with a pair of pants. There’s a short moment where he thinks to puppy-proof his apartment before he remembers that he’ll be sending Little Fang home after getting his tooth fixed, so any work on his part would ultimately be useless. There’s a stab of something—disappointment maybe—low in his stomach, but he shakes it off as he heads out to the kitchen, Little Fang following at his heels.

 _Stick to the plan, Kakashi_.  

(As if he wasn’t just making up the plan in his head as he went along. Genius, really.)

***

“I’m very sorry, Hatake-san, but I’m afraid there aren’t any openings with our veterinary surgeons until next week. If it’s your dog though, perhaps the Inuzuka clan can help?”

Kakashi doesn’t correct the young woman sitting behind the front counter at the vet clinic; the wild animals roaming the forests of the Land of Fire weren’t technically allowed within the village, after all, for the health and safety of both the civilians and the carefully nurtured creatures living within Konoha’s gates.

He pats the white furball sitting against his chest inside his flak jacket, smiling down idly at the clinic secretary.

“No need for the Inuzuka Clan, but thank you for the suggestion,” he says in his usual carefree drawl. “What days do you have available next week?”

An appointment gets locked in, and then they are back out in the sunshine of the open street. With nowhere in particular to be, Naruto gone off with Jiraiya and Sakura in training with the Godaime, Kakashi’s feet automatically take him to the Memorial Stone.

At the sight of the grass field beyond the polished stone, Little Fang yips happily and scrambles out of Kakashi’s jacket, taking off across the expanse of green. A hunt starts, the pup prowling and pouncing at lizards and field mice brave enough to be out in the open air.

At the sight of the young pup stalking through the field, there’s a sudden thought that keeping a wolf in his single room apartment in the middle of the village is probably a Not Very Good Idea, even if the wolf is only a pup who hasn’t even lived for longer than a season. And with the unexpected delay from the vet clinic (which shouldn’t have been all that unexpected in hindsight, really he should have called ahead, but it’s been such a long time since he’s dealt with civilian services of any kind, it simply slipped his mind), the chance for some unpredictable thing to happen that would leave him unable to watch over his new charge is untenably high (ah, but such was the life of a jounin).

Of course, he could always call on Pakkun—perhaps even the whole pack; young pups need friends, right?—to watch over Little Fang if anything pulled him away for whatever reason.

(Which actually reminds him that he still needs to hand in his mission report to Mission Room at some point, probably before an overly stressed desk ninja goes hunting him down and risks getting him in trouble with Konoha’s Wildlife, Animals and Beasts Division.)

(Though he could probably smooth talk his way out of any real damage if needed; at the absolute worst, he would simply have to send the little pup back.)

(After fixing his tooth.)

(Which had always been the plan anyway.)

(Meaning that it doesn’t really matter about getting his mission report in any time soon then.)

(And actually, “I’m helping a wolf pup get his tooth fixed because his mother entrusted him into my care” would make a great excuse for his report being in late for the nth time.)

(And it would be true too.)

(He thinks Obito would be proud.)

A stray cloud drifts over the Memorial Stone and casts a soft shadow over its surface; the edges of the etched lines of Obito’s name waver just so slightly.

A tap at his ankle pulls him out of his thoughts and he looks down to see Little Fang resting at his feet. The cloud passes, the uncovered stream of sunlight glinting off the pup’s outgrown tooth, its sharp end puncturing the detached end of a lizard tail.

Kakashi realises that once again, he has no idea how long he’s been standing there, how long Little Fang’s been running around while he lost himself in his thoughts. He crouches down and scratches the pup behind the ears.

“Guess it got away, huh?” he says.

Little Fang leans into his touch for a bit before shaking his hand off to play with the tail, letting it drop onto the ground and batting at it with his paws. Kakashi finds himself smiling beneath his mask, then turns his gaze up towards the sky.

“I’m doing alright, aren’t I?”

A gush of wind blows through his hair, ruffling the strands. He pushes himself back up, stretching lightly.

“Come on, Little Fang, I’ll take you to see my other friend. I think she’d love to have something as cute as you visiting her.”

Little Fang cocks his head inquisitively, but quickly scurries to catch up with Kakashi’s long footsteps as he begins to walk off, prize abandoned. They take a meandering route through the village training ground fields and patches of forest, avoiding the sound of clashing steel and thumping feet and fists.

Konoha’s Cemetery is empty, as it usually is at the height of day, the symbol of the Will of Fire blazing beneath the sun. Kakashi treads the worn path along familiar tombstones, each engraved name coming out in a whisper under his breath, held in tight by his mask. Coming to a stop, he leans down and gently wipes away the dust gathered around Rin’s name since his last visit.

“Hey, Rin, how you doing?” His voice is soft, no tremors today. “So you know how you were always going on about how I should play nicer and make more friends? Well, I’ve brought a little friend to meet you. Picked him up outside the village and I’m taking care of him until I can get his tooth fixed. It was hurting him and he couldn’t eat properly. We’ve got an appointment with the vet booked for next week. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep him out of trouble before then, he has this thing for chewing on my shirts.” He chuckles quietly, imagining how Rin would have laughed, eyes bright and shining, at his words.  “Little Fang, come here, this is Rin, she’s—Little Fang?”

The spot beside him is empty; he stands quickly, scanning the wide expanse of the cemetery and catches sight of Little Fang over ten rows ahead of him, farther out to his right, nose to the ground as he navigates through the grid pattern of the tombstones.

“Little Fang!”

The young pup glances back at Kakashi at the call but doesn’t pause, continuing to follow along whatever scent had caught his nose. Kakashi hurries over, moving smoothly between the stone squares. As he slides his way through the spaces between the gravestones, the grass rustling under his feet, the path before him warps, the memory of a cold, numbing night bringing a slow chill trickling through his veins. Every step becomes heavy with the thud of his heartbeat, and there’s a hysterical little voice at the back of his head thinking, _surely not_ , surely Little Fang is just chasing after the scent of some stray animal, at any moment the pup will come running back with a lizard caught in his mouth, or go running off in the completely opposite direction, surely—

Hatake Sakumo’s tombstone is clean, not a single speck of what should have been over two decades of dirt and grit blemishing the grey stone. The simple strokes making up his name are cut with the same mechanical finesse as every other tombstone carved from the Third War. Under the bright glow of the sun, their edges seem unnaturally sharp.

Little Fang sniffs curiously around the tombstone, one paw placed on its surface, just below the curved tail of the _ku_.

Kakashi’s body sags a little as he stands there, his back hunching over as if to protect himself from the sharp lines of name before him. The hysterical little voice at the back of his head wonders if maybe he’s invoked the wrath of some otherworldly force by taking in a wild animal and naming it after his dead father.

A second later, he shakes his head and banishes the thought (Obito would laugh at him, honestly), uncurling his fists (and when had that happened? His palms and fingers tingle as he straightens them).

He opens his mouth to call to the pup, but only an embarrassing squeak comes out. On reflex, he looks to his left and right, relieved when he sees no one, then clears his throat.

“Little Fang, come here.” There’s a little more force to his voice than usual, but it comes out smoothly this time, so he considers it a win.

The pup ignores him, continuing his exploration of the tombstone, still looking and sniffing at something Kakashi can’t sense.

He repeats himself several times, every repetition just a little more pleading than the last, before the pup finally looks over at him, ears drawn down as if annoyed by the nagging.

“Don’t give me that look.” Kakashi’s eyebrows furrow as he frowns beneath his mask. “You’re the one who ran off in the middle of a cemetery. Well then, what’re you even looking for? What brought you over here, boy?”

He finds himself gazing directly down at the pup, Little Fang staring back at him unblinking. In the sheen of the pup’s ice blue eyes, Kakashi can see the fuzzy, shadowed outline of his reflection—the messy spikes of his hair, the soft line of his jaw, the sturdy curve of his chin.

A flutter of wind ripples through his hair, breaking the silence and stillness of the cemetery with a low whistle. It stirs a memory—messy spikes of silver-white fluttering in the wind, a soft jawline and sturdy chin holding a warm, gentle smile, and kind, kind dark eyes, always waiting for him.

Kakashi blinks, and the ghost disappears.

He breaks the gaze, taking a deep breath and exhaling hard through his nose, throat gone dry like sandpaper.

“Come on, Little Fang.” His voice is steady. No tremors. “We’re going home.”

Ripping his eyes away, he turns and walks off, the slap of his sandals against the ground echoing in the air. Little Fang hesitates, one ear down, one paw still touching cold stone, before scrambling to catch up to his human.

Behind their backs, Hatake Sakumo’s tombstone gleams in the sunlight.

***

If he dreamt that night, he doesn’t remember it.

His eyes ache with the heaviness of fitful sleep, the muscles of his neck and shoulders tight the way they usually only get on rough missions sleeping in the wilderness, where he curls up small and defensive.

Little Fang seems to catch onto his mood and snuggles with him for the first hour of their morning, but hunger and restlessness soon make themselves known, pulling them out of bed to start another day.

The kitchen is already beginning to empty again, the little fridge and cupboards of his bachelor apartment too small to hold enough food to feed two for more than a few days. He’s done more consistent cooking in the last two days than he ever has since—

(The Hatake Clan House had a kitchen that was roomy and airy and always full of Konoha sunlight streaming in from the large window. There was always the rich scent of damp earth and fresh river water, brought in from the fish they had caught together at the nearby river, and the herbs and vegetables pulled from the garden his father had cultivated behind their house.

He had spent so much time in those places, underneath the curling awning of the trees lining the river banks and the unimpressed gaze of their garden scarecrow with its _henohenomoheji_ face whenever his father was home from missions, being taught about Nature and her gifts, her life-nurturing soil and life-giving water, and all the plants and animals and vibrant, pulsing _life_ thrumming through her veins.

 _Underneath the underneath, Kakashi. There is always a life you can protect._ )

Somehow, as he rummages around the fridge for the slightly wrinkled discounted tomatoes he swore he bought, Little Fang playing patiently with a wooden bowl to the side, the kitchen looks just a little greyer than usual.

***

The day passes, and then another day passes, and even though it’s only been three days since he brought Little Fang into the village, he’s already beginning to feel haggard from running after the wild pup, who switches from curious to terrified and back again faster than Kakashi can turn a page of _Icha Icha_.

Avoiding other shinobi while caring for a wolf pup has proven an interesting, if exhausting, exercise as well, what with all the stealthy manoeuvring and constant lookout he needs to keep—in fact, he thinks it’d make for a good training exercise for his cute little genin team, give them some more practice before their next attempt at tailing him for a glimpse of his face.

(His heart thuds painfully a moment later, when he remembers his failure as a sensei, as _their_ sensei—if only he had tried harder, if only he had gotten there earlier, if only—

If only.)

The kitchen is empty of real food again, his room and bed beginning to decidedly stink of wolf pup for its poor ventilation. Pets weren’t allowed in the apartment complex for a reason after all, even if Little Fang technically isn’t a pet.

He blames the empty kitchen, standing there with the barren insides of a fridge barely half his height gaping open, for the way he’s been dreaming lately of a garden and a river, and the open, grassy fields around them, holding an old, empty house that once smelt of earth and water and life.

A nudge at his ankle; Little Fang whines softly, his fuzzy white coat slightly grey with dust from rolling around on the floor, latest bandage beginning to peel at the edge.

Automatically, Kakashi crouches down to pet him.

“Hey there, boy.” A scratch behind the ears; Little Fang yips in greeting and pleasure, then turns his head pointedly at the door, tail wagging. “Ahh, you want to head out already?” A pause; a split-second decision. “I think I know a place.”

***

The river is just the way he remembers it, soft and quiet, sighing with a faint melancholy whisper whenever the wind blows through the leaves dappling sunlight on its shimmering surface. The grass is surprisingly undisturbed, the rocks barely eroded to his naked eye, as if the river and its banks and trees had tucked themselves away into secrecy, waiting for his return.

Little Fang goes off exploring immediately, running over the rocky bed and straight into the gentle currents of water—and drops. A panicked bark cuts through the air as his legs and tail flail, head bobbing frantically in terror as his small body tries to fight against the flow of the water.

Kakashi’s heart leaps to his throat, his brain flashing memories at him: the sudden plunge of the river bank beyond the larger rocks poking out from the river’s surface; his father’s large, protective hand catching him before the fall; his father’s low, rich voice reminding him to _“be careful, Kakashi, remember to always check your surroundings, check your footing, check your balance.”_

He doesn’t realise that he’s running to the river until he hits it, water splashing all around him as he jumps over the bank rocks and ends up waist deep, hands out and pulling Little Fang securely to his chest.

“Hey, it’s okay, I got you, Little Fang, I got you.”

The wolf pup whines pitifully, pawing at Kakashi’s flak jacket and sending more water splattering up his torso. Kakashi scoops up the little pup in his arms and walks them both back to the bank shore, depositing Little Fang down gently at the edge of the water. Immediately the pup gives a full body shake, water droplets flying in every direction. Back on sturdy ground, the little pup looks mistrustfully at the water, pushing his body low to the ground as if ready to pounce on prey, ears flat against his head.

Kakashi breathes out a sigh, letting the rhythm of the river flow wash over of his ears and calm the rapid pulse of his heartbeat. His entire lower body, from the hem of his flak jacket down to the soles of his sandals, is soaked, more splotches of water forming wet patches over his jacket. The river continues to move around him, a gentle push against his legs, cool on his skin.

“You seem to have a gift for finding yourself in messy situations for such a little guy, don't you, Little Fang?” Kakashi says with a chuckle, watching the wolf pup stalking at the water, poking at it with a paw and jumping back.

Slipping off his slopping jacket, Kakashi hefts himself onto the rocky bank and walks up the gradual incline back to the grassy expanse of the riverside. Trusting the pup not to throw himself back into the river depths again anytime soon, Kakashi takes his time pulling off his jacket and hanging it over a low hanging tree branch to dry. His sandals are slipped off and placed neatly at the base of the tree. A second thought, a furtive look at his surrounding, and a quick flare of sensory chakra, and his shirt joins his jacket hanging off the tree branch. Finally, his hip pouch and kunai holster are unclipped and added to the pile.

He turns back around with a flourish.

“Little Fang!”

The pup jumps. A bright smile spreads out across Kakashi’s bare face, his eyes doing their natural happy curve.

“Time for your first swimming lesson!”

***

Little Fang’s swimming lesson goes, well, swimmingly, if Kakashi does say so himself, the pup’s innate love for splashing around drowning out his initial panicked experience with only a little bit of coaxing. It takes little more than ten minutes for him to grow confident in the water again, trusting Kakashi’s guiding hand to catch him. Another twenty minutes, and the pup has mastered his balance in the water, nose poking high into the air. Within half an hour, the pup paddles happily from the bank to Kakashi’s waiting arms and back again, doing several laps before growing tired and picking out a flat rock to rest on.

Kakashi gives Little Fang a scratch behind the ears for his good work, then dives off to do some swimming himself. He's been neglecting his daily workout for the past half week—he can feel it in the way his muscles are straining just that little bit more, his breathing just a little more laboured as he propels himself through the deeper centre of the river. He messes around with underwater acrobatics, just for fun, somersaulting and twisting with the current, and even manages to catch a passing fish with his bare hands.

It becomes a training game for him, and he carries and positions rocks in a circle right at the edge of the river, making a little water basin to store his catches. Little Fang hops over and pokes inquisitively at the fish as he drops them in, their silver-grey bodies flashing in the sunlight. He recognises them easily, the glimmering gradient scales and yellow sheen of the ayu fish.

He can’t remember the last time he ate them.

(Except there’s already a fuzzy image forming at the back of his mind; his father, deftly descaling a fish with a spare kunai, skewering its body in a wave, carefully perching it over an open fire.

His tongue remembers the sweet, light taste of its meat, the scent of melon from its raw flesh—not his preference, but his father loved it. Had loved it.)

There are six little ayu fish swimming in the tight circle of the makeshift basin by the time Kakashi feels himself appropriately worn out, moving onto the bank to do some quick cool down stretches before crouching beside Little Fang. The pup still has his eyes trained on the darting fish, exposed fang glinting. The bandage beneath it has wrinkled from the water, but still adhering surprisingly well—whoever is spearheading the equipment upgrades from Konoha’s Medical Division has Kakashi’s thanks, especially as the pup suddenly lurches forward, snapping up a fish in his jaws and running off to the grassy upper bank.

The crunch of bone is barely audible over the stream of running water, though the happy sounds of a wolf eating his kill come easily to Kakashi’s ears. He suddenly remembers that they had skipped breakfast that morning for lack of food in his kitchen, and feels bad. As if on cue, his own stomach rumbles and he looks down, contemplative, at the captured fish.

It’s a good hour and thirty minutes’ walk back to his apartment, long enough that ayu will spoil in the warm air. He could run, could always take the rooftops, but even that would be enough to lose the freshness of the fish. And there’s no option of taking the fish back alive, not without anything to carry them in.

Of course, he knows, there is a house close by, just under ten minutes away.

Little Fang makes loud smacking sounds as he finishes his fish, head, bones, guts, tail and all, licking at and cleaning the blood off his muzzle. Already he is eyeing their basin of fish again, white tail wagging.

Kakashi catches a fish by its tail and tosses it to the wolf, Little Fang pouncing on it immediately. Then he goes and grabs his spare kunai from its holster, lets its weight settle in the palm of his hand.

(His hands are suddenly small again, awkward and unsure—holding a kunai to spike, bleed, gut, and descale a fish is completely different to holding a kunai to throw at an unmoving target, or to kill an enemy, and there are no hands now to guide him, no proud smiles to let him know if he’s done a good job.)

Behind him, the river sighs softly.

***

It’s not until he gets to the door of the Hatake Clan House, re-dressed in his dried shirt and jacket, equipment set back in place, four dead fish in hand, and a young wolf pup at his feet, that Kakashi thinks he may have made some very thoughtless assumptions.

After all, it’s been something like twenty years now—how old was he again?—sure, the utility poles and power lines behind the old house are still intact, but who’s to say anything is still working?

(The Hatake Clan name is still registered in Konoha’s village military records though, so they wouldn’t have cut the power. At least, not while Kakashi is still alive. Free electricity, water, and gas to all active shinobi clans is really quite the convenience.)

Or what if some opportunistic stranger had walked passed and, seeing this seemingly abandoned house, decided to casually stop by and rob every nook and cranny, leaving nothing inside?

(The walls are still whole and strong, not a scratch on the windows. And the Hatake Clan House is so far away from the main village hub, all the way out in the outer fields of the village territory, that Kakashi can barely sense the presence of other chakra. Plus, the front door is still locked.)

Maybe he doesn’t even need to be here—he could go back to the river, build a fire, and cook the fish whole. Or even give them all to Little Fang now, and eat later when they’re back at his apartment. His stomach rumbles again; he ignores it, he’s gone longer without food.

(The front door is still locked—he’ll need both hands, needs to find a place to put down the fish.)

He could call Pakkun to watch the pup again while he goes grocery shopping; they had fun together last time, didn’t they? Maybe even call the whole gang this time.

(Ah, the porch will do. Little Fang hops up there as well, curling up with a yawn. Kakashi pulls out his lock-picking kit from his hip pouch and fiddles with it as he walks back to the front door.)

In any case, his apartment kitchen is a much better idea, he has all his dry herbs and spices there—could cook up a storm if he felt like it.

(The lock is old, twenty years old. Hardly a challenge. He should install a new one.)

Really, there’s no need to be here at all.

The front door unlocks with a click.

His heartbeat is abhorrently loud in his chest; he breathes hard, slow, forces it to calm down as he packs his kit away.

His hand trembles as he hooks his fingers in the crevice of the door handle.

He stops moving, standing there, hand locked in place.

A sudden gust of wind, a cool, strong pressure at his hand; he’s not braced for it, and his hand is pulled back by the force, the door sliding open with a rumble.

The wind stills.

There’s a patter at his legs, and he looks down just in time to Little Fang squeeze in between his ankle and the door frame, nudge the front door wider with his muzzle, and run into the darkness.

“Wait, Little Fang, come back!”

Kakashi rushes in after the wolf, pushing the door open completely, the dull, hollow creak of wood sliding against wood rattling in the air. Dust kicks up all around him, silvery-white flecks floating in the sunlight. The wind follows him in through the open door, sending the dust adrift as it whistles lowly across the aged wooden beams and brittle paper of the walls, brushing past his hair and above his cheekbones.

The touch is soft, cool; a gentle caress that makes his step waver, breath trapped in his throat.

It was as if the house had breathed a sigh of relief the moment he stepped across its threshold, the worn frames standing proud to welcome him home.

Home.

His breath comes out all at once in a shaky laugh, hot against his mask. It’s smothering; he yanks his mask down, inhales sharp.

Dry earth.

Old wood.

The metallic zing of rusting iron.

The musk of timeworn paper.

Something grassy, something sweet, something warm.

He breathes out again, a long, smooth exhale tapering into a sigh.

He takes a step forward.

The floorboards creak with his weight, familiar and grounding. He slides his fingers along the panels of the wall to his right; beneath the grainy sensation of accumulated dust, the wood is smooth and strong against his skin.

Their house had always been small, he knew, compared to the sprawling lands and compounds of the Hyuuga and the Uchiha, and even the Nara, but it was always larger in his mind, the memories of a small child. He’s so tall now, crossing the genkan and the short corridor in only four steps, walking right pass the main sitting space where his father had received guests, fusama open to reveal its eight tatami mats, low table, and ornamental scrolls hanging over the raised platform of the tokonoma.

Everything is exactly as he remembers, perhaps a little more worn, a little more grey, but otherwise undisturbed by time, stretched out under the hazy muted glow of afternoon sunlight filtering in through the shoji doors. He moves on, and time moves with him, padding through the house with soft, lingering steps. A peek into the kitchen, with its rustic cupboards and simple cooking appliances, the table where he had passed uncountable evenings with both silence and laughter as his companions. There’s the scruff mark from the one time Obito had tried to one-up him in cooking Rin’s favourite vegetable dish, and the stain in the mat from when Rin had accidentally knocked over a cup of green tea and none of them had noticed until the colour had sunk in and refused to leave.

He could easily reach the higher cupboards above the sink now, could open and rummage through them exactly the way his father did, one hand rifling by memory and feel alone, the other gripped around the handle of a sauté pan, wrist flicking it neatly over the open stove flame, both eyes and ears turned to Kakashi’s story of his latest adventure leading the other village kids on a scavenger hunt through the forest for the rumoured monster living in the heights of Konoha’s trees.

He would be wearing his usual smile, hair in a low, messy tail. Whenever he turned towards the window, attention pulled by the twitter of birdsong or the flutter of wings, the shadows of his dimples would deepen, eyes shining softly.

Kakashi had forgotten just how bright the house could be; he blames it for the way his eyes sting and water, his cheeks too warm.

A breeze curls softly over his face, drying the tears before they fall. He wipes a hand over his eyes, making a note to check for draughts before remembering he’d left the front door open. Well, the house could probably use some airing out anyway, if only to clear out the dust.

He retreats from the kitchen, walks past the hallway and doors leading to the bathroom, the toilet, the laundry room, and two supply closets, turns the corner, and freezes.

Light and shadow slide across the wooden boards of the floor in an elongated checked pattern from the shoji screens to his left, gliding up the eight fusama on the opposite side of the hallway. Even at the angle from the end of the corridor, Kakashi can see the faded images of a wolf and its pup stretched across the four middle panels. The images are clearly drawn in a child’s hand; the animals are cartoonish and stocky, with jagged spikes for fur. The wolf has two overly exaggerated fangs, curving right past its lower jaw.

Little Fang is sitting on the floor right in the middle of the corridor, head shaking rhythmically as he looks back and forth between the two images. At the sound of Kakashi’s footsteps, he finally stops, turning his head to regard his human with startlingly mournful eyes.

“Hey, little guy,” Kakashi says, voice low as he pads across the corridor and crouches down to scratch lightly at the pup’s scruff. He decidedly doesn’t look at the drawings; it’s unnecessary. He can still remember how he had been caught dragging his desk out into the hallway, because he’d underestimated how big the wolf was going to be, oblivious to proportion as children are wont, until he suddenly couldn’t reach high enough to draw its head. “You must miss your family, huh?”

Little Fang whines softly, leaning into the touch.

The heat just underneath Kakashi’s eyes flares again, too warm in the sunlight streaming over their hunched figures. A strange weight has settled over his shoulders, exhaustion pulling at his limbs. The temptation to close his eyes and lay down is strong—just to rest a little, let the ache in his limbs fade away, clear the fog and buzzing in his head.

Plus it’s not so bad on the wooden floor, with the warmth of the sun on his back, his arms curled around Little Fang.

Just a minute.

***

He wakes up bathed in amber gold, the lines of shadow reaching over him looking as thick and heavy as his limbs feel, curled up tight against his body. He stretches out slowly, unfurling his knees from his chest and pushing his arms high above his head. Feeling loose fabric bunched around his neck, he pulls his mask back up out of habit, then sits up and fixes his hitai-ate back over his left eye, feeling only mildly dazed.

It’s a long, slow minute before his brain clicks into gear and he remembers where he is, long enough for his stomach to give a loud grumble and for him to reflexively blush at the sound.

Right, fish. Definitely spoiled by now, if some wandering carrion-eater hadn’t already gotten to it—which hopefully would explain where Little Fang is.

Sure enough, Kakashi finds the wolf pup on the front porch, playing with two dismembered tails and a ripped head, surrounded by a light though still unpleasant fishy stench. Well, at least that’s one of their dinners taken care of.

His stomach gives another loud grumble then, summoned by the thought of dinner; Little Fang perks up, ears swivelling curiously, but quickly turns back to the tail clamped between his paws when nothing interesting appears. Kakashi chuckles, sitting down on the porch, and considers his dinner options.  

Take-out, definitely; he doesn’t have the energy to catch or cook his next meal. An hour and a half to walk for food though—not horrible by any means, even with hunger gnawing at his stomach, he’s been through worse, obviously—and it’s so nice here, with the sky blooming brilliant pink and orange, the tranquillity of the fields and forests outside the village centre, with only birdsong and the pad of paws to disrupt the quiet.

He’d forgotten this too, how nice it was to watch the gradient change of the sky, washed out memories repainted in colour.

It would be nice, maybe, to stay a little longer, let the colour seep into his skin.

He rummages through his pockets and pulls out his wallet, counts the notes inside. Should be plenty, could even pick up something for breakfast if he heads out now. Would be back just before dark, if he goes directly and doesn’t dally. Could call Pakkun to watch over Little Fang again, plenty of space for them to play out here in the open, no shirts around for them to rip.

His train of thought screeches to a halt, and he grins.

Pakkun. Of course.

A quick hand sign, a charge of chakra, a puff of smoke, and Pakkun appears in front of him, seated comfortably between Bull’s ears.

“Hey boss, two of us this time? You know, last time was really just a one-off thing, dog instincts, you know? I swear I…”

The pug trails off as his eyes swivel rapidly in their sockets, head following, taking in their whereabouts, the house, the grass, the clear, open sky above them.

“Boss, this is…”

Even Bull straightens up, making Pakkun slip a little off his head, the wonder in his voice giving way to a little grunt as he rights himself. A high-pitched yelp draws their attention and before any of them can blink, a little white ball of fuzz tumbles over the porch, across the grass, and lands right at Bull’s front paws.

Little Fang jumps excitedly in front of the massive bulldog, completely unfazed by the fall and not a twitch of apprehension in his movements, barking up at the pug.

“Hiya pup,” Pakkun says, peering down over Bull’s nose, who drops one of his big paws on Little Fang’s head in his own greeting, looking down at pup curiously with his big, sombre eyes.

Kakashi smiles at the scene, then waves a hand to pull his ninken’s attention back to him.

“Yo, Pakkun, Bull, sorry to drag you out here, I was hoping to ask another favour.” His voice sounds indulgent even to his own ears, thick and warm and lazy with something that might be the country air, might be the light and colour soaking into his skin. Pakkun’s eyes dart behind him to the house again, but the pug stays quiet. Kakashi’s smile softens beneath his mask, and he picks up his wallet, holding it in the air. “You think you’d be able to find your way to Kenzan from here?”

“What do you take me for, a dead fish?” Pakkun shakes his head, eyeing Little Fang’s leftover playthings with distaste. “I’ve been around here longer than you’ve been alive, kid. ‘Course I can find the way to Kenzan from here.”

Kakashi blinks, a jolt of surprise rushing through him; he hasn’t been called ‘kid’ by his ninken since…

Since he installed a lock, turned the key, and left.

“Ahh, of course,” he repeats, swallowing down the knot beginning to twist in his throat. “Well then, I’ll have the gyūdon. And a side salad, any’s fine, pick whatever’s available.”

He pauses, thinking. Little Fang scrambles out from under Bull’s paw, jaws snapping playfully over short black fur.

“And dumplings,” Kakashi decides finally; easy enough to eat cold, and he shouldn’t die from eating them if he has to leave them out overnight, potential indigestion aside.

“Sure thing, boss,” Pakkun says, “and the pup?”

Little Fang yips happily, as if recognising Pakkun’s reference to him.

“Maa, he’s already had plenty to eat today, he’ll be alright ‘til tomorrow,” Kakashi says, beckoning Bull over with his wallet. The bulldog walks over dutifully, only needing to nudge the wolf pup out of the way twice. “We can head out to the river to catch more fish if he’s really hungry in the morning.”

“You went to the river?”

“Mm, we did.”

Kakashi slips his wallet into the pocket sown into the inner lining of Bull’s jacket, taking the opportunity to give the bulldog a good scratch behind the ears.

“Yo, Kakashi.” Kakashi’s hand stills in the thick folds of Bull’s coat, waiting. “You’re alright, yeah?”

Kakashi pauses, thinking it over.

“Yeah,” he says, finally, “I think I will be.”

***

Pakkun and Bull return just as the first glimmer of night fades in, its soft, cool tone bringing with it a soft, cool breeze. Kakashi rescues the plastic bag containing his food from any accidental spills via ball of white fluff, grabbing it from Bull’s jaws just before Little Fang barrels right into the large ninken and tries to provoke a play-wrestle.

He leaves them to it, trusting Bull to hold back when needed, pulls down his mask, and digs into his beef bowl and salad (spinach with sesame dressing, trust Pakkun to go with the classic), lounging back on the porch. Pakkun hops off Bull’s head and joins him barely a minute later, both of them content to watch the other two play.

“So what’s the plan then?” Pakkun asks when Kakashi finishes his dinner.

The pug is carefully not looking up at Kakashi’s bare face. 

“Mm, not sure really.”

The sun droops over the horizon, sinking fast, the day’s last smear of yellow on a canvas of vivid pink and blue.

Pakkun grunts, wholly unimpressed. “You planning on spending the night here?”

“Mm, no clue."

“Kakashi…” There’s a deep sigh lingering on the end of his name, then a hard beat of silence. “Look, kid.” On instinct, Kakashi looks, and comes face to face with Pakkun staring straight at him, something glimmering in his dark eyes. “You know that if there’s anything you want to do—unless it’s something incredibly, fatally stupid—we’re here for you. You brought the pack together, so we’ll go all the way together—wherever that is—if that’s what you want. It’s really not that big a deal, you know.”

Kakashi can’t keep the amazement out of his voice.

“Pakkun…” A wide grin splits across his face; he holds his arms out, fingers wriggle invitingly.

“Ha, didn’t I just say that it’s not a big deal?”

Nevertheless, he clambers over, depositing himself in Kakashi’s lap and letting himself be scooped up by the man’s cuddle.

“‘Sides,” he says into Kakashi’s chest, “it’s what family do.”

The arms around Pakkun press tighter.

***

The futon is old and lumpy; the pillow old and flat; the blanket old and limp. There are perfectly lined creases where they were folded, drawn from twenty years of sitting undisturbed in a closet. They are time-worn soft, and when Kakashi nestles into them, Bull at his back, Pakkun at his head, Little Fang at his chest, he catches the faintest whiff of citrus still clinging to them.

The night is warm enough to leave open the fusama panels, and the shoji doors beyond them. Starlight glints off the steel of his hitai-ate, folded neatly on his old desk. There’s a wardrobe in the back corner, a bookshelf beside it, lined with the spines of books whose titles he has no idea about. He hasn’t quite made up his mind yet, on whether he wants to go digging through something he had once abandoned.

It’s one thing to step back in time, quite another to deliberately seek out old memories packed away under locks and scars.

Little Fang kicks out a leg, snuggling closer into his chest. Bull grunts once in his sleep, a whoosh of air at his neck. Kakashi catches himself smiling, shaking thoughts from his head and pulling the blanket up a little higher, leaning back more firmly into Bull. Pakkun mumbles something in his hair, swatting at him drowsily with the command to “sleep already, kid”.

Family, huh.

Outside, the summer crickets chirp their night-song.

***

The next day, after a breakfast of cold dumplings, Kakashi checks the utilities in the house. Surprisingly, everything is in working order, rumbling and clanking precariously in their old age, but working. He finds his old fishing rod propped up in a corner of the laundry room, and is hit all over again by the surreal realisation of how much he’s _grown_ , the rod only just reaching the highest point of his hips when twenty years ago it had reached the height of his shoulders.

There are bottles of expired cleaning product sitting in the cupboard under the sink that his younger self had apparently forgotten to throw out when he’d left, one still almost completely full, along with other various cleaning supplies. Out the window, he can see the scarecrow he and his father had sewn together, still watching over their now weed-patch of a garden.

Poor Sukea-san has weathered the years remarkably well, though he appears to be missing his left arm and a _heno_ of his _henohenomoheji_ face. Kakashi can’t decide whether Sukea-san would rather be taken down, or keep hanging on.

A loud bark startles him out of his thoughts; Little Fang is up and wandering about the house, a sleepy-looking Pakkun on his tail. Kakashi greets them both with a pat, then Pakkun is relegated to puppy-sitter once again while Kakashi coaxes a morning-lazy Bull out of bed for another food run, this time to hopefully buy enough groceries to last a week.

They make a pit stop by his apartment to pick up his _Icha Icha_ favourites, some clothes, a towel and hygiene products, and his medical kit. He even makes the split-second decision to be responsible and swipes his mission report from his desk to hand in to Mission Room on the way, a whole week earlier than his standard two-week post-mission report delay.

They’re back just before midday, laden with heavy bags.

Little Fang comes running to greet them and immediately begins nosing at the bags, looking up at Kakashi with hopeful eyes. Unable to resist, Kakashi rifles for a strip of meat, throwing it out for the pup to eat before heading inside to pack the perishables away into the thankfully now-cold fridge. He finds Pakkun dozing on the kitchen floor, the ninken stirring with a small grunt at the rustle-pad of Kakashi and Bull entering the room.

Then he does the laundry. Four times.

It ends up taking both Pakkun and Bull, and a poor, stray hare, to distract Little Fang from pulling and batting at the white sheets and mattress fluttering lightly in the breeze, the three of them racing into the forest in chase. He takes the chance to wash his shirt too, lounging bare-chested on the grass while he waits for it to dry. By the time the three come back, Little Fang happily dragging his kill along, his shirt is clean and warm from the sun.

Kakashi arches an eyebrow at the dead hare, which is met only with a doggy shrug from both his ninken.

Well then.

Kakashi slips his shirt back on, mask hanging at his neck, then proceeds to take the washing in, scrub out twenty years of dust from the kitchen, find the old ceramic plates and earthenware cups and metal pots and pans and variety of assorted cutlery collected over the years stacked in various cupboards, wash them with his newly acquired detergent, and fix himself a late lunch of fried fish on a bed of sautéed greens. 

It’s the most accomplished he’s felt since Sasuke defected and Naruto left and Sakura found a better sensei, even counting all the successful seventy-odd missions he’s picked up over the last two years.

The fish tastes good, almost as good as ramen eaten at an hour too late to be considered dinner.

On the second day, Pakkun makes him call the entire pack, and somehow they all end up at the river. Little Fang is ecstatic at the sudden introduction of six new friends, and his ninken take to the pup just as quickly, indulging the small wolf in play wrestles and keeping an eye out for him as he practices his new swimming skills.

When Kakashi takes off his shirt and sandals to dive into the river, there is an audible collective gasp from his summons. Then Kakashi hits the water, sends a wave splashing over Akino, making his sunglasses slip off, and suddenly it is mass mayhem as everyone jumps in to rescue the sunglasses before they’re swept away downstream.

Lunch hour comes faster than a flying shuriken, Kakashi is quite sure he deserves a post-meal reading session, Little Fang and Shiba discover a wild strawberry patch growing at the edge of the forest behind the house, Bisuke and Guruko compete over who can pull up the most weeds, dinner comes in the form of pre-marinaded yakitori skewers grilled over open flame, Little Fang learns not to touch the bright orange-red thing, no matter how warm and pretty it is, and Kakashi decides that all intense, high-drama action scenes where the protagonist finally, passionately admits his love in the midst of a life-or-death situation is best read by the crackle-pop of fire.

His room is far too small for all of them to sleep together, and too stuffy besides, so his ninken settle themselves in a haphazard line out in the hallway, its shoji panels now practically permanently open to let in the outside breeze. At first Little Fang bundles himself up into the curve of Bull’s paw, but after five minutes of no human, loudly sneaks around dozy ninken, across the tatami mats of Kakashi’s room, and into the protective warmth of his human’s side.

Kakashi very maturely ignores the doggy cooing from outside his door.

On the third day, after his ninken settle on a puppy-sitting roster, Kakashi pulls up his mask, rolls up his proverbial arms, and hunkers down for a full house cleaning. While Ūhei and Urushi keep Little Fang entertained outside, Kakashi and the rest of his ninken wipe down the floorboards and walls, dust the shoji screens, polish the tatami mats and set them outside to air. Akino and Bisuke switch out to watch over the pup, who has now taken a keen interest in Sukea-san, while the others finish up oiling the old wooden beams and furniture, scrubbing the bathtub, sinks, and outhouse urinal, checking the drains and clearing out the gutter, and brushing off the cobwebs tucked into the nooks under the eaves of the roof.

The whole house is gleaming by the time they’re done, and Kakashi likes that the feeling of achievement from yesterday is still hovering warm and bright in his chest.

On the fourth day, Kakashi decides to sort through the things still cluttering the storage units in the house. There’s not much: some blank scrolls and dried inkwells and old brushes, cleaning oil and rags and a set of third generation standard kunai and shuriken, and cheap paper fans stowed away in the three drawers of the cabinet in the sitting room; spare hair ties and simple metal clips and loose rubber bands in little bowls, half empty tea boxes, little bags of seeds labelled with names now too faded to read, and notebooks half-filled with scribbled grocery lists and daily reminders and scattered lines of poetry verses dotted about kitchen. In the supply closet beside the linen cupboard, he finds wooden practice swords, a box full of grey bandages and expired ointments and pills, and a veritable tower of yellowing books and scrolls and woodblock prints.

To his surprise, his old Academy books are hidden away in a box at the very bottom, and he loses an hour flipping through them, somewhere between remembering and reliving his beginning years as a shinobi.

It’s amusing to note how his handwriting has changed (it has nothing to do at all with the commentary his younger self had left down the margins of the books, apparently so far ahead of the class that he had nothing more to do than trail increasingly scathing thoughts the likes of _‘Boring’_ , ‘ _Did this a week ago’_ , and a rewritten version of the Hand Seal nursery song listing the zodiacs in decreasing order of apparent yumminess to stay awake and present).

Kakashi doesn’t remember ever being so morbid, but he supposes that it’s hardly at all surprising.

He flips the page, eyes automatically scanning the edges, and his heart squeezes in his chest.

_‘Dad’s way is better’_

A loud, boisterous voice floods his mind like sunlight streaming through paper screens.

_‘That’s my ninja way!’_

His heart squeezes again, but it’s gentle this time, somehow almost bittersweet, and he is five, and seven, and fourteen, his path paved in gravestones, the world broken into fragments beneath his knees, but he will crawl if he has to, nails scraping dirt, because _underneath the underneath, there is always a life he can protect_. 

Then it settles, and he is thirty, a man and shinobi who has made his way over gravestones and broken worlds, and for all that he has been broken and remade over and over into something stronger and softer than steel, underneath his underneath, he hasn’t really changed all that much, has he?

He shuts his old book quietly, packs it away into the old box in the old closet of his old house, and goes outside to join the game of tag.

On the fifth day, he and Little Fang are late for their vet appointment.

***

“Interesting. I’ve never seen a case of an overgrown canine like this. Can you turn him around so I may examine the other side of his mouth, please, Hatake-san?”

Dr. Nakamura steps back, giving Kakashi plenty of space to gently coax Little Fang around, having learnt of the pup’s nervous tendencies. The little wolf had refused to sit still on the examining table, pawing at Kakashi’s flak jacket until the veterinarian finally relented, and allowed the examination to proceed with Little Fang seated in Kakashi’s lap. It leaves the doctor brushing up awkwardly against the shinobi as he shows her the wound under the noted overgrown canine, now fully scabbed over thanks to the protective barrier of the bandages. The clear breach of the invisible line of personal boundaries is mildly uncomfortable, but Kakashi reminds himself that they are both professionals at work here, even if he’s not technically doing anything that involves getting paid.

Thought in mind, Kakashi carefully leads Little Fang to spin a half-circle over his thighs, then settles him down with a firm press to his rump. Little Fang gives him a look that tells him how very not happy the pup is to be examined like this, but is momentarily mollified with a scratch behind the ears.

As Nakamura leans back in, Kakashi shifts his hand and hovers it just over the tip of Little Fang’s muzzle. He can’t let himself be fooled into thinking there’s a tamed anime in his lap, no matter how close and cosy the pup gets to him, and more to the point, he can’t let a civilian get injured treating an unregistered creature.

Kakashi would need more than two hands to count how many rules and sub-rules he’s breaking right now; somehow, he feels entirely at ease with that.

 “Hm, and how old is he?”

Nakamura reaches out with a single finger to feel across Little Fang’s upper jaw; Kakashi tenses his hand, ready to catch any sharp teeth should they go flying. To his relief, Little Fang puts up hardly any fuss beyond a nervous twitch in his tail. The shinobi relaxes his fingers a little, then turns to answer the question.

“Uh, ten weeks?” Kakashi tries not to make the questioning lilt in his voice too obvious, but thankfully Nakamura doesn’t seem to notice, looking down thoughtfully at Little Fang.

“In that case, his deciduous teeth should be replaced soon. Since he hasn’t seem to have any pain or malformations in his upper jaw, I think we can assume that his adult teeth are normal sized. I might send you to get a scan though, just in case. How well does he ‘stay’?”

“Um…”

Nakamura turns to her desk without waiting for his answer, pulls out a sheet and pen, and begins scribbling on it.

“Here, give this to Chiharu-san at the front desk and she’ll sort that out. They’ll send the scans directly to me, and we can proceed from there. If everything looks as I suspect, we’re probably looking to file down the tooth so it’s not sharp enough to cut into his mouth anymore, and maybe get Little Fang some braces for a few weeks to realign it with the rest of his teeth. Does he have any trouble eating?”

Kakashi shakes his head, taking the slip of paper. “Not since I kept the area under his tooth covered.”

Nakamura nods approvingly. “Good. In that case, braces probably won’t be needed for the time being, so long as we can keep the tooth from piercing his muzzle like that. Beyond its length and the way it’s grown slightly crooked outwards to compensate for space, there doesn’t seem to be any other abnormalities, at least not that I can see with this kind of surface level examination. Once his adult teeth come in, you’ll be able to see how his teeth sit and if there are any problems, we can work it out from there.”

“How long before all his adult teeth come in?”

Nakamura cocks her head to the side, lips pursed in thought.

“On average, most dogs will be six to seven months old by the time all their permanent teeth have grown in. But”—she glances down at the pup in his arms again, eyebrow quirking, the glimmer of a smirk in the line of her mouth—“Little Fang isn’t an ordinary dog, is he?”

Kakashi doesn’t have time to either refute or affirm her implication before she continues on.

“Keep the wound clean and covered just like you’ve been doing, and I’ll take care of the rest. Oh, and Hatake-san? If any big dogs go sniffing around, please feel free to direct them to me. I’ll take care of them too.”

For the first time since he’s stepped into her office, Dr. Nakamura smiles.

***

Chiharu-san makes a quick call, gives him a brief outline of potential payment plans to be finalised at a later date, arranges another appointment for the end of the week, and sends them off for the scan at the clinic’s joint veterinary radiology centre just around the corner that very day.

Just like last week, Kakashi and Little Fang step out of the clinic to greet unfiltered sunlight. As if remembering the trail from that day, the wolf pup turns in the direction of the Memorial Stone and starts walking.

“Ah, Little Fang, no, not that way. We have to go get your scan done now.”

The pup gives Kakashi a wounded look when he moves in the other direction, and Kakashi learns that even wolves can have stubborn doggy tantrums. Eventually, after several backs and forths in front of the clinic that leave other pet owners smiling and nodding in sympathy at him, Kakashi scoops the pup back into his flak jacket and sets them the right way down the road.

Kakashi is most pleased to notice that Little Fang has gained a fair bit of weight since the last time he carried him to the vet.

Little Fang is far, far less pleased to step into another unfamiliar room, and entirely unwilling again to sit still on the bench with the attached x-ray generator overhead. The imaging technologist, clearly having had spent one too many years on the job, lounges by the computers and watches passively while Kakashi wrestles against four stubbornly moving limbs.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” the technologist reassures him, half an hour later when the whirr and ping of a successful imaging scan sounds. “Just the other week, I had a lady here with her cat. Poor thing had a fractured toe, but man, if it wasn’t the twitchiest cat I’d ever come across. Even with its paw in a cast, crazy thing managed to jump right onto x-ray tube and wouldn’t come down. Lady was almost in tears. Poor thing.”

“Ahh, is that so.”

“Yep. It was pretty funny actually, though I think my boss would have been pretty unhappy to find out that the x-ray was in danger of breaking again.” He gives Kakashi a look, eyebrows raised conspiringly. “Always tough being the working man, eh?”

“Haha, right about that.” Kakashi gives a polite half-chuckle, then quickly makes their getaway, nodding his thanks and farewell as he catches Little Fang’s attempt to jump off the bench.

Back out on the open street, Kakashi lets the pup take the lead, and unfailingly, they end up winding their way through the training grounds to the Memorial Stone, then onwards to the cemetery, taking the exact same route as last time. If it weren’t for the niggling feeling that he’s missing something—perhaps willingly, doesn’t want to consider the implications—he thinks he would feel something akin to pride at how easily Little Fang found his way.

As it is, he stands firm by Rin’s grave, tells her all about their day at the vet, and pretends not to notice Little Fang curled up over his Father’s tombstone, staring off into the distance.

***

They drop by several stores to restock food and supplies, Kakashi summoning a couple of Shadow Clones to help carry all the bags home.

(Heh, home. Never thought he’d used that word again, not this way. It’s kind of refreshing.)

Little Fang has a mild freak-out at the appearance of three new Kakashi’s, sniffing at them warily before sticking close to the original the whole way back. A message waits for them when they get there, scratched awkwardly into the dirt in front of the porch to let him know that his ninken have gone off on an overnight training exercise, and that they’d be back by morning. There’s a small childish voice at the back of his head that feels left out; the last time he went on an overnight training exercise with his ninken must have been back in his ANBU days, camping out in the Forest of Death to practice their hunting formations.

That had been pretty fun actually; when the pack comes back, he’ll invite them on another one.

Mental note made, he dispels his clones, puts their new food away, and settles in for an early night, until he discovers that reading in the bath is an unparalleled bliss that he clearly needs to do more often. The water is completely cold by the time Kakashi climbs out and towels off, but he feels soft and warm and sated as he pads to his room, summer air warming his skin, tucks his book away, slips on a pair of underpants, and snuggles into his futon, curling up around Little Fang.

It’s been a long week and within minutes, he is asleep.

(He is asleep, and doesn’t feel when the wind slips through the parted doors and brushes his hair, tucking a few errant strands behind his ear.)

(He is asleep and doesn’t see when Little Fang stirs awake, slips from under the blanket to the open fields outside, nose twitching, eyes shining.)

(He is asleep, and doesn’t hear when Little Fang opens his mouth and gives his first howl, the low-high sound echoing high into the starlit sky.)

(He is asleep, and doesn’t hear the wind howl back.)

***

His pack come back at dawn, and the week passes by in the calm of sunlight and birdsong. It blurs in Kakashi’s memory into a long, drowsy montage of household chores, river trips, morning training sessions, sunsets on the veranda, and finding twenty-two shady spots to curl up in with his book while his ninken teach Little Fang how to climb trees.

Their next trip to the vet is quick and easy; a confirmation of Dr. Nakamura’s suspicions, a rundown of the filing process as relevant to Little Fang’s case—“we’ll  shave off no more than 0.2mm,” Nakamura assures him, “just enough to curb the sharp point so it can’t cut him anymore”—and the anaesthesia aftercare requirements on Kakashi’s part, several documents on patient agreements and consent and insurance and permission for vaccination waiting for his signature, the finalisation of his payment plan, and Little Fang’s operation is scheduled to take place before the week is out.

The operation is entirely uneventful, to use the doctor’s word, Little Fang is cleared to go within the hour.

“Keep an eye out for when his adult teeth start growing in,” Nakamura reminds Kakashi, when he is finally called in to pick up the little patient. “If there are any complications, bring him back in and we’ll get it fixed up right away.”

Kakashi bows his thanks to both Dr. Nakamura and Chiharu-san, and takes the groggy pup home to a nest of ninken sitting in waiting with blankets and a bowl of water.

The house is the quiet that night, words spoken in no louder than a murmur, the hours drifting along with the slow, even rolls of their breath.

That night, even the wind is still.

***

Little Fang wakes up bright and early the next morning, and Kakashi only knows because Little Fang’s leg catches on his jaw as the pup scrambles out from his arms to greet the early sun. He makes a bewildered, sleepy noise, squints blearily at the pup’s exuberant shadow, then drops his head back onto his pillow, snuggles deeper into his blankets, and promptly goes back to sleep.

An hour later, when he is awake and his brain is in working order, he checks on Little Fang, holding the little wolf in his lap while he runs thumb across the tip of the protruding tooth, pressing hard and more than happy when the blunted tip doesn’t break skin. Little Fang displays no hint of pain from the pressure against his tooth, and after watching him eat without any issues, Kakashi peels off the bandage for the final time.

The wound from the pup’s tooth has healed nicely into a jagged, silver scar that’s almost invisible against his white fur. The canine presses, firm but harmless, against it when Little Fang tentatively closes his mouth; the pup seems to register the lack of pain immediately, scrunching up his face and tilting his head quizzically from side to side.

“Looks like you got that tooth all fixed up,” Pakkun says, coming up to sit beside him. They watch together as Little Fang runs and jumps, biting at the air. “You did good, kid.”

“Maa, I just did as I was asked.” Kakashi hums, chuckling a little under his breath when Little Fang manages a full 360-degree twist in the air. “In any case, job’s not over yet; we still gotta wait for his adult teeth to come in.”

Pakkun hums back, and Little Fang lands on the ground, drops to his side, and rolls happily in the grass.

***

They settle into something as close to domestic bliss as Kakashi understands the term, with warm days and even warmer nights. There are more river trips and backyard sunsets and bathtub reading sessions and dinners by campfire; long, lazy mornings and slow, peaceful evenings rolled out between low laughter and spontaneous dogpiles. Kakashi relearns the many peculiar habits of his old house like embracing an old friend; how the floorboard four steps down the centre hallway creaks, how the second shoji door in the sitting room rattles just a little more loudly than its brothers, how the third knob on the gas stove always splutters before it sparks but is best for warming the indulgent cup of saké.

His ninken start taking Little Fang out on hunting excursions, and their play fights and wrestles get rougher as the pack teach the pup all the tricks of survival. With more time to himself, Kakashi decides to try his hand at poetry, flicking through old notebooks and using his father’s scattered lines and verses as a guide. If his own verses sometimes come out a little more, ahem, _provocative_ than might be otherwise standard subject for such an honoured philosophical pastime, well.

He knows at least one Toad Master who might appreciate his efforts.

At some point he remembers to send Pakkun off with a note to Tsunade about his current living arrangements; Pakkun returns with a message about proper paperwork, and something about overdue paid vacation that makes Kakashi suspect he doesn’t have to worry about the proper paperwork at all.

He sends it in anyway, because he can’t be getting too predictable now, can he, and subsequently remembers too that he still needs to get new shirts ordered in. The hustle and bustle of the village is far more enjoyable when he’s not living right in the middle of it, and it makes his run ins with the other village jounin infinitely more agreeable. Asuma, Gai, and Kurenai pick up on his shift in demeanour right away, and the invitations to teahouse lunches, sparring sessions, and friendly rival competitions increase exponentially.

He accepts about half of them, dropping by the village once or twice a week, which works out perfectly for his grocery shopping needs, especially since Little Fang has started catching his own food.

Somehow, a month passes before he even realises it, and the only reason he notices is because Little Fang’s first baby tooth falls out.

It’s somewhat disconcerting—Little Fang is almost as big as Ūhei and Urushi now, the fuzz of his youth given way to a luscious white coat. His growls are deeper, his kills steadily becoming bigger. Pakkun mentioned just the other day that the not-quite-pup-any-longer had graduated from hares to wild boars.

He still prefers to sleep with Kakashi though, curled up close near his head since he no longer fits in the futon with his human.

They’re nearing the height of summer now; Kakashi tells himself that he won’t need the extra warmth.

***

“So,” Pakkun says to him, two weeks later when another of Little Fang’s baby teeth fall out and the first hint of his adult teeth start showing, “how’re you planning on getting him back out of the village?”

***

In the end, they walk straight out the front gates.

Little Fang’s wayward tooth drops off and his adult canines come in without any particular fanfare on a sunny day just like any other, and then there’s nothing for it but to go.

Most of the village shinobi haven’t had the honour of meeting the Copy Ninja’s ninken, and to the young chūnin manning the registrar counter, there is no reason to believe that the large dog-like creature with piercing, intelligent eyes and an almost imperceptible scar down the side of its muzzle isn’t one of the jounin’s infamous hunting pack.

Kakashi signs them out as going on a single-day, out-of-village training trip, once more pretending not to notice the chuunin seeking glances at his companion, or the way she coos softly when Little Fang noses at the paper on the counter.

Not that Little Fang could really be considered ‘little’ anymore; the length of the wolf’s body now stands as tall as Kakashi’s knee, his head reaching the jounin’s mid-thigh. He will be a magnificent creature when he reaches full maturity, with the strength and smarts to rival any man or beast.

The southern road is deserted in the early morning, the traders and merchants from the Land of Waves who used the wide gravel path most often still likely cradled in the warmth of their blankets. Only the twittering of unseen birds accompanies them as they begin their walk, setting a slow stroll down the familiar way.

With nothing but the hazy memory of time and vague direction to recall where he had found the wolf den, Kakashi can only retrace their steps, hope Little Fang’s family hasn’t moved on, and let nature and instinct take care of the rest.

Just like when he had been a pup plodding along at Kakashi’s ankles, Little Fang is as curious as ever, stopping to inspect and mark trees and bushes every few hundred metres. Now he can even climb half of them, running up tree trunks and jumping across branches with all the lithe skill of a Konoha shinobi. It’s not long before Kakashi joins him in the treetops, the two of them ambling through the canopy of the Fire forests and sending those twittering birds flying into the open sky.

It’s a little harder to navigate up in the leaves, especially since Kakashi indulges in Little Fang’s scattered detours up and down the wild trees, but the air is lighter and sweeter closer to the sun, and, well.

It’s probably the last walk they’ll ever take together.

Catching sight of the directional signs carved over bark for travelling shinobi, Kakashi guides them towards that gentle stream running southwest of the village, dropping down beside its cool waters.

Perhaps Little Fang will remember this spot, and come back to visit if he’s in the area and wants to relax and refresh himself, the way shinobi returning from missions in the southern Lands often do.

They take a short break by the stream, then continue on their way, heading back onto the main road. It’s been at least an hour since they left the village, judging by the brightness and position of the sun, and they’re definitely moving faster than when he had brought Little Fang in.

(Or perhaps it only seems that they’re moving faster because Little Fang’s steps are so much larger now, matching his stride for stride.

Funny how much time can change, how much one can grow.)

He knows they’re close when Little Fang suddenly stops and turns, staring into the thick of the forest, nose twitching. Kakashi waits patiently while the wolf walks, slowly, hesitantly, off the road, rustling the bushes lining its side, and disappears into the shadows of the forest depths.

Well then.

Guess that’s it.

Kakashi sighs, sending a silent prayer to the Twelve Great Sages of the Age of Gods that Little Fang will find his way home, or at least live his life free and uncomplicated in the wild, and turns, ready to take the long road home.

He’s barely taken three steps when he hears the rustle of leaves again, registers the swift rush of running paws, and feels a sharp tug at the hem of his shirt and flak jacket.

A familiar whining growl; Kakashi twists his body to look down over his shoulder, sees Little Fang with his mouth clamped firmly around his shirt. Little Fang stares up unblinking at him, blue eyes imploring.

“Ah. I guess we still need to say goodbye, huh?”

Little Fang lets go off his clothes as he turns back around, dropping to his knees to sit eye-to-eye with the wolf. He raises both hands and gives Little Fang a firm, final scratch at the neck and behind the ears, petting down his back in broad, steadying strokes.

“I really enjoyed our time together, Little Fang.”

Little Fang whines softly, rising onto his hind legs to pull Kakashi into a hug. He presses forward until their foreheads touch, his fur tickling the corners of Kakashi’s eyes, licking at his cheeks.

“I’m going to miss you,” Kakashi whispers, squeezing back. “Really. Thank you. For everything.”

Then he stands, gently guiding Little Fang’s front paws back to the ground, and nudges the wolf softly in the direction of the forest.

“Go. You still have someone waiting for you. I’m sure of it.”

Little Fang looks at him once more, eyes shining so brightly Kakashi can see the shadow of his reflection in them, then turns, finally, resolutely, and leaps into forest, running until even the briefest glimmer of sunlight on his white coat is lost within the shadows.

Kakashi waits, one minute, and then another, before taking the thousandth first step home down the still, silent road.

*

*

*

He stumbles.

Pain thuds across his body in dull blows as he crashes into seven tree branches on his way down to the ground, only just managing to get his forearms under him and twist his body to roll with the impact of the fall. He crashes into something hard and jagged—a boulder, a sprawl of tree roots, he doesn’t have time to tell, because a barrage of kunai is whistling through the air towards him. He speeds through the Substitution Jutsu, slaps an explosive tag onto the clone, and slips behind whatever he had crashed into—good, a boulder, better protection from the blast—in the split second of body replacement.

There’s the fake squelch of metal embedding itself into flesh, the low thump of three—no, four—pairs of feet hitting dirt, a half-beat of tension, then the poof of his clone dispelling immediately deafened by the bang of the planted explosive.

Kakashi catches a half-shouted curse as he uses the blur of the smoke to launch himself into the protective shadows of the forest canopy, casts a quick genjutsu to mask the heavy sounds of his pants, and takes a minute to gather his bearings.

Four pairs of feet hitting the ground, but his Sharingan had caught seven assailants on his tail, rogue mercenaries judging by lack of village symbol, presumably sent to keep the free trading agreement between Konoha and the newly negotiated Land of Rivers from being established.

He’d taken out two as they crossed the border into Fire with a well-timed Decapitation Jutsu immediately followed by a scorching Katon, leaving two blackened heads crumbling to ash on the ground.

Five left then; four below, one…

He summons two Shadow Clones, sends one down to keep the enemy below occupied, the other away into the trees.

The mission has far exceeded its expected parameters; there shouldn’t have been any opposition with the River-Konohagakure trade, no reason to send more than one high-level jounin to oversee and deliver the final signing back to the Hokage.

Something’s shifting in the wind, the first stirrings of a beast awakening.

Kakashi slips a thumb into the scroll pocket closest to his heart, steadies himself with the weight of his mission pressing against the pad. The right side of his hip and the outside of his left knee is throbbing, but nothing feels broken or dislocated. Five against one are hardly favourable odds though, especially against a group of what look to be A-and-B-ranked ninja; he’ll have to make this quick, before chakra exhaustion hits him and he’s left completely vulnerable.

A tingle at the base of his head jars him from his thoughts.

He braces himself for the influx of senses: leaping through the forest, searching for a flicker of foreign chakra, rustling leaves to the side, he turns to look and—a strike straight to the back of his head, a hand pulling at his hair, the flash of steel slicing at the delicate cords in his neck.

Precise. Merciless. Efficient.

Not even a glimpse of a body, meaning they’re at least as skilled as Kakashi himself. Trained and trading in assassination, probably the leader of the group.

His target then.

And to draw them out…

He dispels his genjutsu, summons three more Shadow Clones, and sends them out to cover each of the enemy nin below them. The smoke is finally dispersing, leaving their figures open targets on the forest floor. Kakashi raises a hand in signal, and a shower of kunai come raining down. Three of the enemy block and avoid the knives with ease, but one is pierced in the side, right above the hipbone.

A high-pitched yelp of surprise, then the injured enemy—male, young, clearly the weak link—looks down at the blood darkening his blue shirt. He drops to the ground, clutching at the wound, screaming.

“Takahiro-kun!”

Female, young, abandons her position and opens up her defences in her haste to rush to the young boy’s side.

Mistake.

A clone intercepts her, moving low and ducking under the flail of her arms before springing up to run the sharp point of a kunai from belly to breast, the force of her momentum pushing the blade deep into her body. She chokes, slumps into the clone’s arms.

“You bastard!”

The boy leaps up, tearing the kunai out with a squelch, and charges.

Mistake.

The clone delivers a sharp back kick, foot landing right under the boy’s ribs. He falls back hard, eyes rolling to the back of his head, then collapses, open wound bleeding thick and heavy.

Kakashi dispels the clone, the image of the girl’s wide, fearful eyes rushing through his vision long before her body hits the ground.

Two down, and yet the fifth hidden enemy had yet to show their face. Truly mercenaries.

Kakashi signals his second clone down, gestures to keep its flank open and wide to attack, keeping his Sharingan focused on the shadows and the treetops.

“Tch. I knew those runts would slow us down. What the hell was the boss thinking? ‘S’what you get when you let goddamn strays into the business.” One of the remaining enemy nin, a large, burly man with dark, cropped hair, steps forward to the clone, pulling a scroll out of his pants pocket. Kakashi can’t see his face or expression from his hiding spot, but his drawling, belligerent tones make him tense. “Hope you’re ready for a real fight now!”

His remaining partner, a woman with long black hair, says nothing, but shifts into a fighting stance.

“Oh dear, at it again, is he?” A voice like poisoned silk in his ear, a sudden presence at his back. “I must say, you are a tricky one, Copy Ninja Kakashi.”

Kakashi spins hard on his heels, letting a handful of shuriken fly with the rotation. They spiral through the air, thunking into the trees and branches around him. The Sharingan whirls frantically in its socket, catches the flex of an ankle as the fifth assailant propels themselves off a branch and into the air, landing smoothly between the last two of their group.

Male, young, with sadistic, narrow eyes. Dangerous.

“What the hell, Akihito-san?” Burly turns around, glaring hard.

Akihito ignores him, instead waving in Kakashi’s direction.

“Hey, Copy Ninja Kakashi! Let’s bring the fight down here, shall we? Much easier than the two of us running through the trees looking for one another, don’t you think?”

“Akihito-san, what—?”

Kakashi jumps down, ignoring Burly’s spluttered outrage in favour of dispelling his final clone and drawing back as much chakra as he can.

Akihito’s right; Kakashi’s already spent half his chakra sending out multiple Shadow Clones after the initial fight and chase; to waste anymore on games of chase would be foolish, and judging by Akihito’s predatory grin, there’s no chance of retreat.

Better to settle everything at once, now he’s drawn out all his pursuers.

Three left. He can do it.

“Sure thing,” he says, pulling out his last set of kunai, “I was just getting bored too.”

The fight is brutal.

Akihito turns out to be a genjutsu specialist, of all the Sage damned things, keeping his Sharingan busy dispelling illusions and leaving him with only seconds to defend from the other two’s attacks. Burly’s scroll summons a ten feet spear that keeps him from getting close to any of them, jumping and rolling to avoid breaking bone. There are cracks in the earth from where the spear had struck, tree trunks splintered and boulders crushed. The lady keeps him running, never-ending volleys of kicks and punches trying to back and corner him into the long reach of Burly’s spear.

If it were any one of them alone, he could take them, and take them easily, even two would have been fine, but with the three of them together, he is slowly but surely being overpowered.

The Sharingan cuts through seventeen illusions of kunai and shuriken flying his way, just in time to redirect a punch away from his face to the space beside his ear. He grabs the offending wrist, snaps onto the connected arm with his other hand, and spins, throwing the lady over his shoulder. She’s barely left his grip when the pressure in the air at his side changes; he pours chakra into his hands, drops to his knees, and calls up a Mud Wall. It rises just in time to be demolished, holding back the spear just long enough for Kakashi to jump out of the way, flipping through the air.

He lands, and his left knee shakes, threatening to give out. Movement in his peripheral vision—no time, he jumps again, dodges another punch. A flicker of chakra to his right, and he runs straight towards it, blows a giant Katon right into Akihito’s smirking face.

Akihito leaps right over it, throws two kunai directly into his face. Kakashi cuts off his fireball, twists out of the way of the incoming blades—and is struck hard on the shoulder by a roundhouse kick.

He staggers back, trying to catch his breath, centre his rapidly depleting chakra, regain his footing, but exhaustion makes him slow, too slow to avoid the punch right to his stomach. The world spins as he slams into a tree, pain spiking up his back.

Another blow to his stomach, jarring his bruised shoulder against the tree, pain stealing his breath; he turns his head to the side and hacks. A hand in his shirt collar, forcing him up and pinning him against the tree. Through the blurriness of his vision, a fist, ready to pound into his face.

He catches the punch a centimetre from his nose, digs deep into his chakra reserves, and sends one hundred milliamperes of electricity flooding through the enemy shinobi’s body. She doesn’t make a sound as her body goes through the shock, and both of them crash to the ground, her body dead weight on top of him.

“Damn. That’s amazing. No one’s ever lasted longer than five minutes fighting us all at once. The stories really don’t do you justice, Copy Ninja Kakashi.” Kakashi forces his eyes open, tilting his head back to see Akihito leaning over them, twirling a kunai with a forefinger. “I’ll make sure your head fetches a price worthy of your name. It’s the least I can do, given what you’ve done for Minako here, don’t you think?”

He has neither the air nor energy to answer, fingers digging futilely against the body pressing him down. It hurts to breathe, his lungs seeming to spasm in his ribs. His entire torso throbs, the pain and discomfort intense enough to cut into the clash and clang of his thoughts, racing to pull together an escape plan.

Hardly in his predicament, Akihito straddles his body, seating himself casually on his teammate’s back, taking a moment to pet her hair. The added weight makes Kakashi wheeze, ribs protesting. He brings his hands up on instinct to push Akihito off, but he is exhausted and weak, and Akihito brushes his hands away as if they were merely mildly annoying flies.

The kunai inches towards his neck.

A low, terrible, haunting sound, sharply rising in pitch, wavering high in the air.

The kunai freezes, Akihito looking at Kakashi in shock. It’s the only sign Kakashi has that he didn’t hallucinate the sound in some chakra-exhausted delirium, but it’s as far as he gets before the sound rings out again, louder, closer, vibrating in their ears with a sudden gush of wind.

Akihito tenses, bringing the kunai back to his chest and hunching his shoulders protectively, eyes snapping to the forest. Burly steps closer to them, spear held out.

Silence.

Akihito huffs a laugh, shoulders relaxing, brings the kunai back down towards Kakashi’s neck.

“Now then,” he murmurs, “where were we?”

Kakashi curses himself for not doing something while he had the chance. He forces himself to calm; there’s still time. Five seconds, less even, but still time. Anything to get out, get home, another punch, another burst of lightning, another—

Low, spine-tingling sound, echoing all around them, like the wretched moans of a ghost rising from its grave. Straining his ears, Kakashi can hear the creak of branches, the rustle of leaves, and doesn’t know whether he’s about to die or be saved, or worse.

The wind whips around them, cold and furious, the sound still riding on its tail. Akihito squints his eyes against the force of its currents, his hair flicking into his face.

Mistake.

A flash like white lightning shooting past Kakashi’s eyes, and Akihito is gone. For a second, Kakashi’s dazed mind thinks his enemy had literally been zapped away, but then the screaming starts, and the forest vibrates with growls, glowing with yellow eyes.

Wolves, prowling and stalking and leaping from the shadows.

Kakashi knows now what that low, rising sound had been: howling, a warning for trespassers, a call to hunt.

He turns his head to the side, and blood splashes onto his cheek, seeping into his mask and filling his nostrils with its overpowering metallic scent. Akihito’s glassy, fear-soaked eyes stare blindly at him, kunai fallen from his hand.

Burly rushes forward with a shout, swinging his spear wildly at the fangs mangling his leader’s throat.

The wolf snaps at the shaft of the spear, catching the lacquered wood between its powerful jaws. The wood cracks, and a jerk of the wolf’s mighty head tears the spear out of Burly’s grip, clattering to the ground. In a flash, wolves flood out of the shadows, pouncing on the shinobi, biting and tearing.

There’s at least seven of them Kakashi’s tired eyes can track, snarling, attacking in a blur of darting white, grey and black. It’s impossible for even a man of Burly’s size and strength to withstand and defend against so many bared teeth and claws. His blows are getting clumsy, blood is running down every limb.

Kakashi has to run, while he still has the chance, before he too becomes prey.

He tries to push the body above him away, get up, get away, but his body feels fused into the earth, like his bones have taken root deep into the ground.

He can’t get up.

Trapped beneath a dead woman, beside a dead man, death screams ringing in his ears, and he can’t get up.

His heart is thudding wildly, lungs burning like he doesn’t have enough air, head ringing because not now, not like this, not—

The pressure on his chest lifts, and the full breath he inhales is such an unexpected relief, his rising panic cuts itself right off. Dimly, he’s aware that all the screaming and shouting has stopped, replaced the sounds of wet smacks and crunches. He forces himself to breathe slow and deep, trying to pull his thoughts back together even as his vision goes spotty and the familiar loom of unconsciousness beckons him to darkness.

He blinks rapidly, and suddenly there is a white face in his; sharp blue eyes, a long narrow snout, twitching black nose, and a stretched, jagged scar running down the side of a muzzle. The wolf presses closer, gently hooking a tooth over his mask and pulling it down, and licks away the dried blood staining his cheeks. It nuzzles his neck, then sits back, tilting its head up slightly towards the sky.

A soft breeze ruffles its fur, the white hairs on its head and neck pushed back as if someone were petting it. Kakashi’s vision swims, and when the wind blows across them again, it seems to shimmer as if reflecting sunlight, as if something were there.

The wolf throws its head back fully and howls, a long, sombre note that soon becomes a chorus, the other wolves too lifting their heads to the sky. The shimmer on the wind glows brighter, almost pulsing in time to the wavering howls and swirling into a half-translucent haze. The light ripples, swirls, gathers, and Kakashi’s breath catches in his throat.

A long silver tail.

Kind, dark eyes.

A gentle smile.

His father sets a hand on the white wolf’s head, and Kakashi’s haggard mind finally remembers a pup who found his way to a tombstone, and a door left shut for over twenty years. Sakumo extends his other hand towards him; Kakashi so desperately wants to reach out, would spill out of his own body if only he could grasp that outstretched hand.

The wolves’ chorus floats in the air, then drifts into silence. The light grows dimmer, fading away, until Sakumo is no more visible than the wind.

Kakashi thinks he might have shouted, but there is no way of knowing; the last thing he feels before falling into the peace of blackness is a cool, soft breeze sliding through his hair.

***

He wakes up, and there is nothing around him but trees, and the faintest lingering stench of iron.

The forest is still.

***

He is: home; reporting in; healing; fine, Gai, really; resting. Home.

***

He installs a new lock.

This time, he doesn’t throw away the key.

*

*

*

Choji runs without looking back.

Kakashi thinks Asuma would be proud; he can’t wait to tell him, let him know just how much his student has grown, though he’s sure—he’s sure—Asuma already knows, is here, is watching, is going to do everything in his power to keep that boy—that proud shinobi of Konohagakure—running

The rattle-clank of the Other Pain dismantling and crashing to the ground settles his body’s instinct to keep fighting, to protect.

He thinks he truly understands the White Fang’s choice now, for what is a Village without those that bring it sunlight and warmth and laughter?

What of his numbing limbs, his blood turning cold, if he can save those that are his sunlight, and warmth, and laughter?

As he stares up at the sky, the wind blows gently across his hair. He sinks into its touch, his heart at ease, and lets it carry away his final breath.

_Father, I’m home._

 

 

_fin._

**Author's Note:**

> • For the most part, I tried to use my research on wolves and dog orthodontics to write a mostly realistic development for Little Fang, but definitely took a lot of artistic liberties for convenience and plot, so please forgive any glaring mistakes or misinformation if you happen to be a wolf/animal orthodontics expert  
> • To spike a fish; iki jime. The generally accepted ethical way of killing a fish by striking its brain with one blow  
> • As far as I can tell from ep. 483, Kakashi’s childhood house doesn’t have a lock on the front door, and is the traditional sliding style door where locks don’t really work anyway. But again, plot, so please imagine the door in a similar way to this: https://youtu.be/iIiGR2F9hrc?t=1m5s  
> • Fusama: sliding panels that act as doors and interior walls; different to shogi which are usually exterior walls  
> • Tokonoma: elevated area against a wall in a room intended to receive guests, usually to put/hang art stuff  
> • Kakashi rolling up his proverbial arms comes from the Japanese version of the English, “to roll up sleeves”: ‘Ude mafari sude’: lit. ‘to roll up arms’, or so Google tells me  
> • Re: Twelve Great Sages of the Age of Gods; I really like the idea of working Shintoism as a spirituality/belief system into the Naruto world, and this is one of the things I made up, combining the Shinto mythic story of the Seven Generations of the Age of Gods with Naruto Sages. Basically, 12 _kami_ (gods, deities) emerged after either the creation of the universe, or heaven and earth, and the last of the generations, the pair Izanagi and Izanami, would form the Japanese islands. I pretty much transformed the 12 _kami_ into Naruto-style Sages with some vague idea about them emerging from the chakra of the world and so the shinobi consider them as like, living within nature, and pray to them for earthly-related stuff like, “please don’t let the river flood while I’m making my getaway from the mission,”  
>  • So from google again, if you get hit/electrocuted between 100-200 milliamperes of electricity, you will die. I’m still pretty sure I don’t understand how electricity works, but hey, at least I know this much now! 
> 
> Edit: so I found out that Bull is waaaayyyyy bigger than I thought he was, haha, so that's fixed up now and Little Fang is most definitely not as tall as Kakashi, whoops xD  
>  
> 
> So! Did Kakashi really need 19k words to work through his daddy issues? Apparently yes xD
> 
> I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! Kudos and comments highly appreciated!<3


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